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'Hope was her survival mechanism'

Lisa Larson, 1:04 p.m. MDT May 20, 2014

Penny Lindenbaum of Santa Clara sits with her mother, Fajgla Moncznik in her home in New Jersey. Moncznik is a survivor of the Holocaust, a fact that continues to impact her life and the life of her daughter.
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Growing up as a small child in Israel, Penny Lindenbaum often heard her parents use words like "Auschwitz," "Bergen-Belsen," "survivor" and "found" when they conversed with their friends, but she didn't really understand the meaning.

What she did know is that at age 5 she attended a friend's birthday party and came home wondering why she didn't have any grandparents to attend her parties, let alone aunts, uncles or cousins. When she asked her mother, the answer was short — they're dead — with no follow-up information.

A child of Holocaust survivors Berl and Fajgla Moncznik, Lindenbaum was incredibly curious to learn more about what her parents had been through, but she seemed to know intuitively that it was a topic not open for discussion.

"My dad didn't want to talk about it too much," Lindenbaum, a Santa Clara resident, said. "He harbored a lot of anger. He had a lot of nightmares (that) he tried to block out."

Although Lindenbaum knew there was a part of her parents' lives that caused them deep pain, it wasn't until she was in high school in the United States learning about the Holocaust and reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" that she started to hear the kinds of stories that were a very real part of her own family heritage.

Because Lindenbaum's mother was eventually liberated from the same camp where Anne Frank died, Lindenbaum slowly started asking questions about her mother's story and little by little details emerged.

"I was hesitant, but she asked me and I was obligated to tell her the truth," Fajgla said, adding that it was extremely painful to share.

Fajgla was 11, the youngest of five children, when the Gestapo came to her door in Poland in 1939.

"She recalls that it was a Friday night and they were sitting at dinner," Lindenbaum said, recounting her mother's words.

Fajgla's was the only name on the Gestapo's list, so despite her mother's pleas for mercy for her youngest child, Fajgla was taken by herself from the Bedzin ghetto to the Neusaltz labor camp in Lower Silesia (a historical region in modern-day Poland). Later, she was transferred to the Flossenburg concentration camp and then to Bergen-Belsen in northern Germany where she was eventually liberated by the British in 1945.

"I still have nightmares, and I still remember," the 85-year-old New Jersey woman said.

Of the myriad atrocities she witnessed and endured during her years in the various prison camps, her memories of being awakened early in the morning and having to stand for hours in the cold while the prison guards conducted "roll call" are among the worst for Fajgla.

In Bergen-Belsen particularly, every time they called for roll call the prisoners would have to step over dead bodies to get outside, Lindenbaum said, paraphrasing her mother's words. "She wondered if she would be the next body that somebody would be stepping over the next day."

Hearing those kinds of stories from her mother and knowing her mother experienced them at such a young age is difficult for Lindenbaum to hear.

"When I think about it, it's mind-boggling the experiences they needed to endure," Lindenbaum said. "No matter what you're thinking, think 10 times more than that; 10 times as horrific and horrendous as you can imagine."

Lindenbaum's father, Berl, was 23 when he was taken to the Klein Mangersdorf labor camp in Upper Silesia, according to a biography on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. He was transferred to several labor camps, and was ultimately sent to Reichenbach Sportschule where he was liberated by the Soviets in 1945. He met Fajgla in the Weiden displaced persons camp. They were married in 1948. They later moved to Israel where Lindenbaum was born before immigrating to the United States in 1957.

Berl died in 2008.

"We didn't talk about it," Fajgla said of the fact that she and her husband were both Holocaust survivors. "We didn't share our experiences."

Lindenbaum said that one of the many things that impresses her about her parents' fortitude is their seemingly innate desire to move forward with their lives after everything they had endured.

"Before we knew about things like counseling and crisis intervention, they knew enough to pick up the pieces and move on," Lindenbaum said.

By the time Lindenbaum was nearing adulthood, her parents were more open to sharing their stories, partly because they felt that it was important for her to know. Lindenbaum was like a sponge, soaking up the stories and asking about her aunts and uncles, whether or not she had cousins, what her grandmother was like, and more. She learned that of her mother's and her father's families, only one sibling on each side survived in addition to her parents. Everyone else was killed — presumably in Auschwitz, but they are not sure.

When asked what it was that kept her alive, Fajgla said that even though she felt like faith had given up on her, she clung to hope — hope that she would one day see her family again.

"Hope was her survival mechanism. Hope was what she lived on," Lindenbaum said. "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. That kept her going."

"Apparently there was a purpose for me to have survived," Fajgla said. "To believe in God. To bring joy to generations to come."

Lindenbaum said her mother no longer feels angry about her experiences, but she does feel robbed. Robbed of a childhood. Robbed of life.

Lindenbaum, however, is angry. Angry that humankind could be capable of such atrocities.

"The older I get, the more I learn," Lindenbaum said. "I'm angry because it didn't need to happen. There is a whole culture of people that was almost annihilated, for what purpose? I don't understand."

However, because of the example of her parents and her own desire to keep something so awful from happening again, Lindenbaum said she is "more tolerant" of others and she tries not to judge.

"It makes me more sensitive to people's needs," she said. "I just feel I am a better person for having parents who have gone through so much."

Lindenbaum continues to study and read everything she can about World War II and the Holocaust, in fact she said she is "obsessed with it." Much of what she learns brings her back to the admiration and respect she has for the men, women and children who endured unspeakable hardships and managed to move on.

"I just can't say enough about the resourcefulness of these people," Lindenbaum said.

Lindenbaum and Fajgla plan to light a memorial candle today in Fajgla's home as part of Holocaust Remembrance Day to commemorate the family members they lost. Fajgla said her synagogue in New Jersey will light six candles, one for each one million Jews who died as a result of the Holocaust.